Paradox Record
by YellowTangerines
Summary: A story of setting one's eyes on new targets. Homestuck crossover with Kagerou Project, no Sburb, no trolls. Spoilers for Kagerou Project! /Story 9 of Mekakustuck / Current act: ACT 2
1. Retelling

**Paradox Record**

Everywhere across the TV Room, screens burst to life from their posts. Images made of yarn and cloth flickered, as a narrator's voice crescendoed from faint to speaking volume. The Snake of Clearing Eyes was nowhere to be found. Footsteps were sounding, slipping in and out of earshot, behind the TV Room door. Dave gripped his sword just a little harder – when the steps faded again. Why go out if they could come back?

So the coolkid stood there, watching the digital puppet show dancing in front of his eyes.

This was how it went.

* * *

Scarlet silk rose up on a cardboard stage.

 _Once upon a time, there was a little monster who lived all by herself in the forest. She was lonely in her home of trees, so lonely that not even the animals gave her company. So she longed to see the outside world – a wish granted to her when a young boy came to visit._

The white-haired fluffball on that balcony couldn't be anyone Dave knew. Except Marry.

A switch of a stained-glass scene, and skyscrapers with tissue paper for windows towered over. The boy and monster stepped everywhere across their stage in perfect sync, gathering a party of kids in hoodies wherever they went. These kids were made of stained glass too, and with each new one Dave thought he knew them somewhere. Maybe they were whoever was standing next to him. Maybe not, and this puppet show was just to get on his nerves.

 _The monster felt herself happy surrounded by all these children, whom she had begun to call "friends". She was fond of them, and they were fond of her. However, as myths across the world will tell you, people and monsters are not meant to be together._ A piercing sound split the coolkid's ears from every corner of the TV Room, dyeing the screen candy red. There was no gunshot, though. Only broken glass.

 _As it came to be, there were other beings in the world of the monster besides herself and humans. These beings had swallowed the hearts of the children long ago, and did not gather around the monster for "friendship", but unity. They were her servants, for the monster was a queen. Finally, they would come to serve her again, after being separated for so long in those human bodies._

Gunshots, impaling, so much death. Dave never thought he'd have to see that again, not after the Heat Haze so many years ago. What a shitty world.

 _This is the cycle that repeated itself a thousand times over, until the monster-queen was too taken with grief to do it again. But instead of realising the immaturity of her actions, she created more servants for herself to take human hosts, to make more so-called "friends". And so these friends came from across the seas._ More stained glass figures, but this time Dave didn't think he recognised them. He knew who they were at the first glance he took. Four kids wearing blue, red, black and orange, made of crystal shards glued together. No one sane would do this, but Dave was sure by now that Clearing Eyes was one sick, sick person.

 _Though the new children were welcomed with open arms, they did not come from this world unlike the first children or even the monster. It is still unknown where they came from, but regardless of that, they do not belong here. They only came because the monster made them, and it is they who will suffer for her childishness._

"Cruel, is it not?"

The voice of an android, louder than the whoosh of an opening door. Grabbing John by the hood with one hand, holding a pigtailed girl's wrist with another. Minus the girl, Dave could almost call this sight familiar.

When was Konoha ever this alert? This couldn't be him. But by the looks of a fainted man back on the catwalk, when the coolkid remembered how possession meant a second life…God, no.

All the screens in the TV Room shut off. "It takes more than a locked door to stop me," Clearing Eyes continued. "And this one here, in the blue hoodie? I wonder how, my queen. I wonder how you ever thought making more anomalies would ever prolong these loops. Still, we are behind schedule. Shall we wrap things up now?"

"Stop it," said Seto. "You're not laying a finger on Marry!"

"And what does 'wrap things up' mean, anyways?" Rose asked. "But regardless of that, don't try anything. Two of us are armed and trained. Now what's the meaning of all this? And we want an explanation for everything."

"E-every single fucking thing," Dave repeated.

But Clearing Eyes only chuckled. "Ah, you children. You put so much attention on me, a simple servant, when your queen stands amongst you. But everything in the puppet show is true. I would have told you myself, but I couldn't have done that while giving this loop individuality, could I? Just as you yourself did, my queen. I'm only following suit. You can't fight destiny."

Some mouth this snake had. It was all Dave could ever hear, despite John's muffled struggles. Somewhere in that speech, though, the trickster's voice made it out a couple places. Trying to say something, just before he popped out of existence. _Be really careful_ , did he say? _Be really careful_.

Careful wasn't going to cut it. The tragedy had already started.


	2. Downfall

So many things were impossible.

Keeping people from dying, for example. No matter how far Dave leapt, how fast he swung his sword, Clearing Eyes was there first. He was there with scarlet puddles on the floor, glass shards in places they shouldn't have been. Limbs bent in impossible ways, final cries shaking the TV Room. Kano calling the snake a bastard just before a pillar of screens trapped his ankle. Momo's pink hoodie more rust than peach. Something in Dave wanted to curl up into a little ball, the same something that sat heavy in his stomach like a rock. If he was already sick from seeing the Mekakushi Dan die, then what about Jade? Rose? John, if he wasn't already dead?

No, no. Not now. There were better times to think about that. Better times, including never. If anything, though, at least one of them would live. Clearing Eyes hadn't laid a finger on Marry once, not during his shooting frenzy. All those bullets were aimed at someone else. She didn't have a single cut on her skin, not a single broken bone, but to say that Clearing Eyes did nothing to her? Completely wrong. Something was happening. Something.

What a shitty observation in the middle of _everyone dying_ , though, especially as the pillar holding Kano's ankle fell onto his head. Fuck that noise.

Kido, struggling before to move with a broken spine, stopped. Stopped for good. Don't think about it _,_ Dave begged himself. Don't.

Impossible, though. Impossible not to think about it.

So thoughts crowded and cluttered Dave's mind, filling each and every corner of his focus. Ene (as the girl insisted she was) picked a bad time to become human again. And Momo was out of blood. Hibiya was out of oxygen – Clearing Eyes couldn't have stopped choking the clairvoyant, no matter how many times the coolkid swung. Every time, it ended in being pushed away. Every time, it was someone dying, but not Jade. Not Rose. Not Dave himself.

It didn't matter how many times the three of them picked away at the snake with hands and swords, or tried to bring one of the Dan members away. The Mekakushi Dan died first. Always them first. And never, Dave realised, never him or Jade or Rose. Were they being saved for last? Was that sick fuck saving them until the Dan was all dead, just because he could? The coolkid couldn't stand it. He had to stand it, if just to save one single person. But he couldn't.

And neither could Marry. She wasn't herself. The albino Dave knew wasn't the pale figure up in the air, a backsplash of brass gears behind her. Dave didn't know anyone who floated surrounded by nine glistening, translucent little serpents. But Clearing Eyes did, didn't he? Screaming something about tragedies, about bringing everything back to the start.

A reset. Exactly what Shintaro was talking about in his Pesterchum memo, long before they took off for this mission. The thing that Jade and Rose begged not to have, begging with the kind of breath Dave ran out of forever ago. What if it happened now? What if all they worked for went back to the beginning, years ago, when the Mekakushi Dan first got into all this? What about when John first died? Fuck the fact that basically no one would remember anything. The idea sent shivers down Dave's spine.

But still, how long would he be able to feel shivers for? There was a glass shard – no, sword – pressed against the coolkid's throat, and it burned like hell. Especially when it sank deeper into his skin. And the wall wasn't made of cotton marshmallow. Being pushed against it, hoodie and muscle and bones and all, wasn't anything close to fun.

It was getting harder to breathe, let alone speak. Harder, harder, harder. Jade and Rose must have felt the same, having their necks to the edge of the very same blade. Clearing Eyes was still going on about turning back pages, setting actors on stages, but Dave? He couldn't listen. For every 'fuck you' that formed in his mind or plea for no reset, the sword dug further into his throat. Far enough to hurt, getting nowhere near better.

This was not…


	3. Trigger, part 1

…The right time to say that. This was not the right time to say that. The others called him and Shintaro the Battle Strategy's 'safety net', right? Because he was John, and he had his eye ability. There was something he had to do. Nothing the Mekakushi Dan came up with was ever done solo, so why start now?

If only this was just a regular mission. Regular missions didn't have scientists fainting on the spot, the thing inside him about to kill everyone. Regular missions were over after coming back to the present, after Kido's feedback and whatever anyone else had to say. Like not to hyperventilate. John was doing that a little, wasn't he? Yeah. Stop doing that, he told himself. If people died because he got lightheaded, that'd be stupid. Really stupid.

So the trickster sat up, forcing his breaths to go a little deeper. Thinking the kind of thoughts that would let him be okay, and let him make things okay. Nothing back there in the lab was normal. Everything about that meant having to help. Help, but how? What were the orders again? Think, think, think. Accompany the group as a projection, that was the first one. Come back if anyone got hurt, or if anything equally bad happened. And if things ever went downhill, talk to…

"H-hey, John, you're back? What happened over there?" Shintaro. Talk to Shintaro, the one person with knowledge of previous timelines.

"Oh, hey, Shintaro," said John. "I am not sure how to tell you this, but…everything has gone pear-shaped."

"Wait, what do you mean by that? 'Pear-shaped'?"

"It means everyone is dying! The guy you said was hosting Clearing Eyes fainted in the middle of the fucking catwalk to the TV Room, and I think he's dead! Then Konoha started attacking everyone, but I don't think he is even Konoha anymore. He's all black. And Konoha is usually tired and hungry and…"

"Nice?"

"Exactly!"

Something snapped in Shintaro's eyes. "That's impossible," he said. "It can't be! Not yet! John, how many people were dead when you came back?"

"When I woke up again on the couch? Nobody."

"What about Ene? According to the plan, she should be trying to use the lab's technology to get everyone out of harm. You think she's doing that?"

"Oh, right, Ene! Shintaro, you know that she is a human, right? While we were trying to find some way to get Konoha out of the lab, we found her human body. Then she told me this long story about Konoha being this guy she used to know, and that maybe if she was in her human body he would listen to her. I think! I don't really know."

"Ene, you bastard…Dammit, that doesn't matter now! John, try to go back to the lab. I know you used almost all your energy, doing what you were doing just before now, but try your hardest! Tell me who's still okay, and who isn't. And, if there's no reset by the time you get there…tell Marry. Don't let her reset the timeline."

So went his orders. John lowered himself back onto the couch, pulling his mind back to that moment he was told to be in. That moment. The one in that room filled with steel poles and a million widescreens, the one that smelled of chemical and felt like cool concrete.

The one where his friends were about to die.

They were so scared. All of them.

Was it his fault that Ene was still there? But Konoha could crush phones with his fist. And punch computers until they were junk. Was it even preventable?

 _Fuck_ the Snake of Clearing Eyes. Fuck him and everything he had ever done. To anybody.

In the middle of all those thoughts, John didn't feel any different. No drifting of thoughts, no harsh weight, no nothing. If he looked up a bit, this was still the Mekakushi Dan's living room. Why? Wasn't projecting supposed to be easy by now? He was the most experienced out of all the Betas. This shouldn't have been a challenge. Unless, of course, unless he didn't want to go.

No, that was it. John didn't want to go back. But everyone depended on him, so he had to. And the orders were simple! Just return to the last thing he saw before breaking the projection and coming here. It didn't get easier than that. So the trickster took one more deep breath, thinking backwards to the bone-cracking grip on his wrist. Thinking to Clearing Eyes and his too-big mouth, and Dave's stutters when he demanded the snake explain everything.

Then came the drifting feeling, washing over John like a lead wave. The living room's table and TV began to melt with the wall, blending and collapsing into darker colours. Blurring, shifting, the temperature getting colder like a lab would…

Colder. No it wasn't.

Why was it getting hotter? It was a sauna in here.

This wasn't what the lab looked like. The lab was sleek and sterile and dark save for neon floodlights, not sunny bright. Was this outside?

Shintaro would have had the AC on. The TV Room was very much a cool aired place, just like the rest of the building it was in. And it shouldn't have been this hot. It wasn't like that, John remembered, when he was outside following the rest of the group. This wasn't on the weather forecast, but it was still getting hotter. The air was so thick. So humid. There was light everywhere, harsh like staring straight into a lightbulb. Was this what passing out felt like?

If so, John didn't want to do that. He opened his eyes, letting go of the memory and all its fear and wrist pain. Whatever this place was, the trickster didn't know a thing about it. But it was full of mirages – a bit trippy, to be honest – little things that shimmered in the heat. Looked like a city, almost like the one he and his friends were supposed to be in. Almost.

Everything was just so hazy. Hot, and hazy. From the city light wires above to the chipping crosswalk paint below, nothing was truly clear. Not John's own hands. Not the poles planted all around the trickster for miles on end, or the skyscrapers that towered stark white. The lines on all these things kept wavering. Why? Why did they do that? There was nothing wrong with his vision. He was wearing his glasses right now. Even if projecting made everything go melty and blurry for a while, it didn't stay that way. Not for long. Not for this long.

So this had to be something else. None of this felt like the Projecting Eyes, and besides – someone else was here. Red jacket with white lines running down the arms. Short hair, black and a tad spiky. Shintaro? But last John checked, he couldn't take anyone to the past with him.

"What the hell is all this?" the trickster asked. Was the question to himself? To the neet in the distance? Who knew. Who cared.

"It's…" Shintaro trailed off. "I'm not too sure, to be honest. But, I feel like I've been here before. Man, and it's hot…wait. This place…I think it's the Heat Haze! John, this is the Heat Haze!"

"But that's impossible. Unless we are dead or something, we can't be here. And we aren't dead! At least, I think so. Wait, what if we got sent here manually? Like by somebody."

Yes, because that was very much the cause of being here. Very much. But whether John believed himself or not?

He was right.


	4. Trigger, part 2

For Dave, though, it didn't matter how he got here. All that mattered was being alive, and that at least _some_ people were alive. Even if they weren't in this exact corner of…where was this, exactly? Some ruined city?

No other way to describe it, not that the coolkid knew of. Roofless apartments laid on their sides. Rubble, piles of dust and concrete, narrowed the roads. The clouds above were muffling a sunset, never moving or fading from sight. It looked like a video game, but what kind? Some apocalyptic first-person shooter? No, no, there were better things to think about than that. Like how to get out. Whether or not Clearing Eyes was still slaughtering anyone.

Did Ene know this place? Or Takane. Whatever Momo called her, before dying. "So, Takane – " Dave started.

"Just call me Ene."

"Okay, cool, Ene it is. So Ene, do you know this place? I mean, the way you're eyeing everything looks like you do."

"Honestly? I do sort of remember being here. Feels like some kind of odd nightmare I had forever ago…just before I became a cyber girl. Ugh, what do I mean by nightmare? I'm talking about the Heat Haze! This feels like when I was back there. I hate thinking about it."

"Well shit Ene, you're in it right now. But guess I can't blame you for it. I wouldn't want to be back in my end of the Heat Haze, either. Did yours try to kill you like mine did?"

"Ugh, yes! Crashing buildings everywhere. I had this bridge literally crumble under my feet. Obviously I got out, but barely…I hate this place. But enough stories! You know what we're supposed to do here?"

Yeah, exactly. What were they supposed to be doing? Fuck the plan. There was no plan, not anymore, because the fainted bridge guy was as useful as shit. They'd have to figure everything out themselves, with anyone who knew anything elsewhere or dead. Could the mission still happen? Everyone was scattered across this trippy excuse of a reality. Was there still a chance of being able to do something, anything to end the timeline bullshit? Maybe. Some people were alive. Some people's wounds vanished, some people were standing again. No timelines reset. Not yet, at least. Dave wondered if that was progress.

Yeah, but that wasn't really an answer to Ene's question, was it? "I have no fucking clue," Dave answered. "Think we could come up with something to try?"

"I really don't know," said Ene. "Neither of us are really the planning type, to be honest with you."

"Fuck that idea. If we come up with a steaming pile of shit, then we can get Shintaro and Rose to hit us on the head later. So how do we kill the Snake of Clearing Eyes?"

"Well, apparently a snake gets into someone with a wish. Clearing Eyes can jump hosts because of that. I've got someone I've wanted to see for a while, which…which I bet we can do, because this is the Heat Haze. And if no one else wants anything…"

* * *

 _…Then the mission's as good as done_ , said Hibiya from under hanging wires and perching crows. _I'll get to see Hiyori again. And maybe if you want to see your grandpa, that could happen._ Not a problem there. Not to Jade, even if she didn't usually play tactician for the group.

 _I'm guessing you'd like to see your family again. The adoptive one, I mean_. _Maybe it'd be good for you and Mr. Tateyama. Or everyone._ Rose's words, bouncing off the waters of a shimmering river. Seto didn't object to that.

 _Really? A retrieve-the-important-person mission? Well, I guess that is one way to fix things. Probably our only way at this point, because I don't have ideas_. _Are we going to look for…the one who founded the Mekakushi Dan?_ Just a couple of questions from John to Shintaro. All their answers were 'yes'.

So came a new mission for nine and four kids, thrust into the Heat Haze by the push of a panic button. There was a killer on their tails this time, but weren't the stakes a little different? Not a lot of timelines had a friend-turned-full-Medusa shifting the world around, instead of restarting from scratch. Not a lot of timelines only had a few people revived near its end, to keep the casuality count as small as possible. Things were different now. But the goal was still the same.

Because this was the Kagerou Daze Battle Strategy. Its objective was to ensure the future existed.

With that, the children scattered.

 **End**

* * *

 _AN: Hi again, guys. I know this came late. Sorry about that. I'd drop excuses, but that's not really a nice thing to do :( But anyways, I should be talking about fun facts and things, because this is the endnote.  
_ _So, last time I very obviously hinted at the naming scheme for the fics, right? Well, I'd hint at something else, but...you're going to need knowledge of the finale for it to truly pack a punch. For now, though, look at the way I ordered the POVs in ACT 2. The first story went to Jade. Now the second story'_ _s gone (almost entirely) to Dave. Who do you think comes next?_  
 _Well, thanks for reading_ Paradox Record _and the Mekakustuck series as a whole! Comments and criticism will be much appreciated. ~YellowTangerines_


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